For each and every show that airs on VH1, a team of music supervisors here at the network have spent countless hours determining exactly what pieces of music best complement the footage that we have shot. This team —the CMI (Creative Music Integration) group— listen to thousands of songs each month in an attempt to figure out how best to utilize musical cues to reinforce the emotion and drama on shows like Mob Wives and Basketball Wives, so we thought it would be a cool idea to give you an inside glimpse into their world.

Each month, we’ll put together a list of all the songs that have been featured on the programs and promos that you see on VH1, which will be accompanied by two things: Specific commentary from the music supervisor as to why they selected a particular song for a particular scene in a show, as well as a Spotify playlist for you to sample these songs. Without further ado, here are all the songs that we featured on VH1 during the month of March!

City and Colour‘s “Hope For Now” is featured in Episode #210: The melancholic vocals from Canadian Dallas Green, aka City and Colour, capture the emotions between Ramona and her daughter after they visit Ramona’s boyfriend in jail. Saying goodbye to the father figure in her life proves to be tough as she’s reminded that he won’t be around every day like he used to be. After Green sings “how can I instill so much hope but be left with none of my own” we hear Ramona relate her daughter’s current situation with her visits to her grandfather.—Isaac, CMI Music Supervisor

Chances are viewers are drawn to Mob Wives every Sunday night to catch the explosive drama, tears and laughs (courtesy of Big Ang) that our favorite Staten Island ladies never seem to run short of. This week was no different as we watched Carla’s warm reunion with ex-husband Joe, newly divorced Drita’s fledging dating attempts, and Big Ang opening up about her tumultuous marriage. However, it was the scene where Renee is shown quietly lamenting Junior‘s distant behavior that seemed to really resonate with the Mob Wives audience this week. Her loneliness and vulnerability in this scene is brilliantly emphasized by the accompanying music, Gary Clark Jr‘s “Things Are Changin’.”

The scene opens with footage of desolate locations around Staten Island, as the sun sets we hear Clark’s smooth R&B vocals over the gentle plucking of a jazzy guitar. As we transition into Renee’s home, we find her lying in her bed almost cradling herself. It seems she and Junior have hit a crossroads again after discussing the future of their relationship. As she explains, “Something just don’t sit right. I just don’t feel right. It just feels so unfinished…” A shot of Junior driving away highlights the increasing distance between them. The lyric “Things are changing now and I can’t tell/Where I’ll be from here on out/Ooh it’s hell” poignantly accentuates the uncertainty of their relationship.

This hot button issue was on the top of everyone’s mind at this year’s SXSW Festival, where the worlds of technology and music collided for a few days earlier this month. Spotify executive Sean Parkerexplained during a VH1 Rock Docs panel audience that “There’s definitely some sort of dissent brewing between record labels, publishing companies and artists [about the compensation they get from streaming services] … Spotify is returning a HUGE amount of money [to the record labels]. If we continue growing at our current rate in terms of subscriptions and downloads, we’ll overtake iTunes in terms of contributions to the recorded music business in under two years.”

But what do the musicians themselves think? We sat down with a number of artists at varying stages of their careers —veteran acts like Train, The Shins, and Keane, as well as relative newcomers like Alabama Shakes, Best Coast, Fun. and Gary Clark Jr.— to get their perspectives on this controversial subject. Find out what they have to say in this exclusive VH1 Tuner video!

You would’ve been hard-pressed to find a person who had performed more times at the SXSW Music Festival over the years than Gary Clark Jr. The 28 year-old artist is, without a doubt, one of the best musicians to ever emerge from the fertile Austin scene, and his 2011 Bright Lights EP was so well-received that he was invited to play for President Barack Obama at the White House just last month. So, we thought, who better of an authority to convince us that there’s a bright future for rock music, a genre which seems to be falling a bit out of favor with the youth of today.

“I don’t really think rock music has gone anywhere,” he told us over the weekend at the 2012 SXSW Music Festival. “It’s just that people are interested in other things. Musically, you can do so much more, there’s new technologies and ways to express yourself, but it’s not going anywhere.”

Well, there you have it, straight from Gary Clark Jr.’s mouth! He’s currently in the studio working on a full length follow-up to his most recent EP, due out this summer. “There’s no real theme to the album,” he told us. “I’m trying to do what I did with the Bright Lights EP, which is kind of give a little taste of my influences and what I love musically, which is blues, soul and rock n’ roll music.”

The 2012 SXSW Music Festival is in the books, y’all. Your friendly neighborhood VH1 Tuner team was down in Austin for five days, but it felt more like a month (in a good way!). By that, we mean that Austin is a very inviting place, the kind of city that is big enough that you don’t get bored by it, but small enough that you get familiar with the layout quickly. In short, by the time we left the city on Sunday afternoon, it sort of felt like home.

If you’ve never been down to Austin —this was actually the first time down there for both myself and our ace photographer, Jen Marigliano— we wanted to give you a vibe of what the city is like during the festival. So, in this special SXSW edition of our long-running Music Seen feature, you’ll get a sense of what we experienced during our short trip to the Lone Star state. You’ll see some of the artists that we spent time with (like B.o.B, T.I., Neon Hitch, Train, Kimbra and more!), the crowds of people who fly in from all over the world to see live music at intimate venues, and how music truly takes over this awesome college town for six days each and every March. Enjoy!